Since I'm a trad, I didn't do the first essay, and the second essay was "Please tell us anything else you would like us to know about you". But it had optional in its header. I usually opt to not do those prompts because it is not true that they can "only help you". I view those prompts as a place to put important updates or things that you think would greatly sway the school in your favor. If you just put a fluff piece in there, like my generic diversity prompt, I dont think it would have done much. If they wanted a diversity or adversity prompt, they would have asked for one imo. I have also seen across SDN that they can indeed hurt you if there is just space filler in there and the person looking over your app is basically reading BS that they could have known from your app. I can see how it could have disadvantaged me at Drexel though, since they get like 11k apps and it is important to try and diversify yourself, but I didn't really have anything super important that was not already on my application.